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Feature Suggestions, Bug Reports, and so on


Celtic Minstrel

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I couldn't sleep last night, so wrote a list of ideas that just came to my mind. Here they are:

 

-Flip/Rotate Terrain

-Unlimited items in town

-99 Special Items instead of 49

-Items that could be pushed (sounds complicated)

-Items that could be USED when in a certain place (sounds really complicated)

-Item Type- Gun

-Item Type- Bullets

-Play more than 1 special at a time

-Custom monster species (# in editor, actual name when playing)

-Custom town size

-Change item abilities (Take out Prot. from Humanoids, Lizard Slayer and the like with some way to specify species #)

-More room for special nodes

-Higher stat limits

 

I'm a little unsure about some of these, and some were probably already mentioned before, but this is just what my sleepless self made. There were two more, but I couldn't read with all the drool there... frown

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My comments on your ideas.

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Flip/Rotate Terrain
If you mean like BoA's tinting system, excellent idea. I probably thought of it myself at some point. If you mean something else, please clarify.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Unlimited items in town

-99 Special Items instead of 49

First one, yes. Second one, no. Unlimited special items would be the plan.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Items that could be pushed (sounds complicated)
I think conveyors already do this. If you mean pushed by walking into them, I'll say it's incredibly unlikely.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Items that could be USED when in a certain place (sounds really complicated)
Can you give an example? It might not be as complicated as you think.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Item Type- Gun

-Item Type- Bullets

No. Just no. Blades is basically a fantasy game, so guns don't really have a place in it. If you really want a gun, get rid of the crossbows and replace them with guns. Or make it a missile with no ammo, like the sling.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Play more than 1 special at a time
Please explain what you mean by this.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Custom monster species (# in editor, actual name when playing)
I don't think this is very likely, but the available species to choose from will certainly be expanded a fair bit.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Custom town size
Not going to happen; it's too much work, and with the current engine you can pretty much get any town size smaller than Large (which as I recall was either 128x128 or 256x256 tiles), simply by reducing the town boundary.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Change item abilities (Take out Prot. from Humanoids, Lizard Slayer and the like with some way to specify species #)
I think this is planned.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-More room for special nodes
Are you referring to the fact that you can only have x number of nodes in each town and y number of nodes in each outdoor section, plus z number of global nodes? If so, worry not. Those numbers will be raised to infinity.

 

Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Higher stat limits
Highly unlikely.

 

 

EDIT: By the way, everyone... don't bother making any suggestions related to raising limits. 99% of limits are going to be removed anyway.

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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
My comments on your ideas.
Originally Posted By: Karoka
-Items that could be pushed (sounds complicated)
I think conveyors already do this. If you mean pushed by walking into them, I'll say it's incredibly unlikely.
Like barrels and crates? i remember pushing barrels around in E3 all the time (ocd, had to group them all :p), does BoE do this still (i think it does) and if so could we just give an item a 'pushable' flag, have it move like a barrel, and such?
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Originally Posted By: Less Than Three
Like barrels and crates? i remember pushing barrels around in E3 all the time (ocd, had to group them all :p), does BoE do this still (i think it does) and if so could we just give an item a 'pushable' flag, have it move like a barrel, and such?
A barrel is a "barrier" by the standards of the BoE engine; collision detection for barriers is a part of the engine. Items on the ground, however, are not checked for collision detection, and since there may be hundreds of items on a single space, I don't really think it's practical.

Originally Posted By: Less Than Three
i might be remembering this completely wrong, but couldn't items be 'stored' in barrels, and they'd move with them? If so, why not just make the item _think_ it's in a barrel and also change it so it isn't invisible?
Items stored in barrels do move with the barrel, yes. More specifically, as I recall, any item marked "contained" that happens to be on the same space as a barrel moves with the barrel when it is pushed. (I suspect that this property could be used to make "hidden" items that are revealed by pushing a barrel over them.)

In order to make the item think it's in a barrel, you need a barrel (or equivalent) for it to think it's in. And since making it think it's in a barrel means marking it as "contained", and contained items are not drawn... it doesn't really fit into the engine. That's not to say an exception could not be made to allow it. I don't however think that such an exception would be worth it.

Random idea: Maybe "using" an empty space to push items off of it?
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Maybe we could instead make it so barrels (and other barriers too, maybe) can have nodes attached to them for certain events, and in general give them more itemlike properties. i'm guessing that barrels, etc, are stored in the scenario as "Here's a barrel". We could change it to "Here's a barrel with id X", and then somewhere else define non-default characteristics of the barrel, such as picture, node interactions, etc.

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They are actually stored as:

preset_field_type preset_fields[50];

Barrels are stored as fields along with crates, webs, quickfire, stains, blocked spaces and barriers.

Data structure "preset_field_type" consists of four bytes:

location field_loc; 2 bytes

short field_type; 2 bytes.

There is no free space for what you suggest, your idea will require a major overhaul of the scenario file. Ditto the program would need to be rewritten. Luckily BoE is now open source.

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Barrels are stored in the scenario and in the game as a "barrier"; in the scenario, a barrier is an object with an associated location, while in the game it's stored as a 2D map of bitfields.

 

I'll think about maybe being able to attach nodes to barrels, but it's not very likely. More likely I'd suggest either making immobile barrels if you need something special attached to it (ie a terrain that's a barrel), or duplicate the special to be called on every space that the barrel could conceivably be and run some checks to see if the barrel actually is there (though that would probably require that there's only one barrel in the area).

 

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
There is no free space for what you suggest, your idea will require a major overhaul of the scenario file.
Recall that a major overhaul is planned! tongue
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Regarding an overhaul, yeah, the Mac version is already using a completely new save file format. Something similar's eventually going to have to be done with scenarios too, I reckon. (While maintaining backwards compatibility, of course.)

 

 

Barriers having properties is an interesting thought. For the case of barrels and crates more specifically, though, what about shifting them away from terrain entirely and making them a special kind of item? Then adapt the push-related code to apply to items instead of terrain, where applicable.

 

This would, I realize, be complete overkill for how the game uses barrels right now: they only need coordinates, and all the other item properties would be going to waste. But! It would establish a framework for portable containers later on, perhaps, if that's ever wanted. (There are only 24 slots for displaying items, but we could borrow NetHack's strategy of reusing/replacing those slots for display when a container is open, then reverting back to displaying the normal inventory otherwise.)

 

This would be in the far, distant future, of course.

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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
You could make "barrel/crate" a terrain property, then allow terrain types to have more than one property each.
I don't want to delve into making a true "pushable" terrain. In BoA I can see that being fairly simple, since it separates floors from terrains, but in BoE I think it's just not worth it.

Originally Posted By: icelizarrd
Regarding an overhaul, yeah, the Mac version is already using a completely new save file format. Something similar's eventually going to have to be done with scenarios too, I reckon. (While maintaining backwards compatibility, of course.)
There was a plan in place for the scenarios to take on a similar kind of format to the savegames, which is to say a gzipped tarball with a custom header (with the custom header being identical to the header of the original scenario format). I just didn't get around to actually coding that.

Originally Posted By: icelizarrd
Barriers having properties is an interesting thought. For the case of barrels and crates more specifically, though, what about shifting them away from terrain entirely and making them a special kind of item? Then adapt the push-related code to apply to items instead of terrain, where applicable.
I think you've gotten a bit mixed up here. The push-related code applies to barriers, not items; specifically the barrel and crate "barriers". Having barrels and crates as "barriers" seems fine to me, and making them "items" doesn't seem to be very conducive to them being containers (though I suppose if they're an exception...).

What kinds of properties would barriers have? I'd have to point out that the way they are currently stored doesn't lend itself very well to giving them properties, though.

Originally Posted By: icelizarrd
This would, I realize, be complete overkill for how the game uses barrels right now: they only need coordinates, and all the other item properties would be going to waste. But! It would establish a framework for portable containers later on, perhaps, if that's ever wanted. (There are only 24 slots for displaying items, but we could borrow NetHack's strategy of reusing/replacing those slots for display when a container is open, then reverting back to displaying the normal inventory otherwise.)
Oh, having items that are containers. I dunno. Worth thinking about.

Originally Posted By: icelizarrd
This would be in the far, distant future, of course.
Clearly. tongue
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Barrels and crates are no big problem. Currently we have movable sign terrain in the BoA 3D Editor. Pre-existing terrain is temporarily not shown when a sign terrain is placed on the relevant square.

The game can remember the underlying terrain on each square no problem, because that is fixed in the relevant town record. You will need to specify a floor graphic to be placed under the barrel/crate.

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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
You will need to specify a floor graphic to be placed under the barrel/crate.
That's really the problem right there. And besides. The current system works perfectly fine; I see no reason to change barrels and crates to be terrain instead of barriers.

Changing barrels and crates to be items? I don't like the idea, but it may be worth consideration. Changing them to be terrain? I consider it a bad idea.
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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
The push-related code applies to barriers, not items; specifically the barrel and crate "barriers".
Well, that's why I mentioned switching the code to apply to items. Though I did say "terrain" where I should have said "barrier"--I guess I was mentally lumping them together at the time.

There may not be many advantages to making crates and barrels into items, and it would be a decent chunk of work; so, upon reconsidering, I say nix the idea. I suggested container items for the future, but, of course, there's no reason we couldn't have container items in addition to barrels and crates as "barriers". Especially since barrels/crates cannot ever be picked up, and items that could not be picked up wouldn't be doing anything useful as "items".

I have to agree that making them a terrain type doesn't seem worthwhile either.
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Hmm, from a cursory glance through the Windows code, yeah they do. It's mentioned that there's no cap in the comments, but apparently nothing was done about it yet.

 

I think I remember hearing that blesses do have a maximum "effect" in that any bless value 8 and over gets treated the same. So you can bless yourself up to, say, 100, but the game won't give you any increasing benefits past 8. It's just, it'll take an unnaturally long time for the bless to lose power.

 

I agree that it should be a bug. Should be pretty easy to fix, luckily.

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Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

 

This is well-known territory. People have pretty much always known that certain Bless spells stack to ridiculous heights, as far as certain effects go. This is part of how BoE (and previous Exile games) have always worked.

 

Whether or not this behavior was intentional when Jeff originally coded it is hard to say. I'd wager to guess that each individual instance of Bless effects (capped or uncapped) were intentional, but the inconsistency (and overpoweredness) probably were not specifically intended.

 

If you are seriously intending to change things like this, then stop right now and branch the code, because this is very much a part of BoE, and some of the people who played BoE a decade and a half ago will want these exploits preserved.

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We could do the legacy compatibility options thing, give people a choice. But, aside from the fact that it feels kind of messy to to leave the code as is, I don't really care either way, honestly. (Theoretically, too much blessing should wrap around to being cursed, though you'd have to get up to 32767 for that to happen, so I doubt anyone's ever likely to encounter that behavior.)

 

Just to confirm--looking at the code again, as far as combat calculations go, bless/curse does indeed have a maximum of 8 and a minimum of -8. So the proposed alteration wouldn't affect the power of blessing or cursing--just the length that it lasts. I believe.

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Tricky situation with nerfing blessing duration. Had this been in the early days of Blades 12-13 years ago, I would have said, definitely. Unfortunately, some portions of scenarios had assumed this behavior by design. We're sort of stuck here in this respect.

 

While, yes, legacy compatibility options are indeed possible, I could see the amount of legacy portions becoming out of hand quickly, making code more difficult to maintain. At the point of modifying basic mechanics of how gameplay features work, a branch is a preferable option, in my opinion.

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Originally Posted By: icelizarrd
Just to confirm--looking at the code again, as far as combat calculations go, bless/curse does indeed have a maximum of 8 and a minimum of -8. So the proposed alteration wouldn't affect the power of blessing or cursing--just the length that it lasts. I believe.
This is incorrect. Bless and curse show up in numerous places in the code, and different caps are applied in each case, and in at least one place different multipliers. See:

http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=202052#Post202052
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Considering the complaints that it's too hard to write scripts for BoA, telling people designers that they have all the power and complexity of C/C++ with which to shoot themselves in the feet is an excellent idea. (Bonus points for having arbitrary numbers of different versions of the game running around, whose subtle differences may not be well documented at all, and which may not have been properly neutered to prevent them from loading scenarios intended for other versions!)

 

tongue

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Who's computer would blow up?

 

I played this series on a Peforma 550 with all of 16MB of ram & a whopping 160MB hard drive & I've never known how fast the processor was... *looks up* holy crap! 33MHZ! High rollin, yo! God bless Jeff Vogel for making some of the best games I could run on that machine(& for doing the Exile Trilogy CD so I could actually afford them as a kid).

 

And that would be awesome building an entire planet, but it would probly take more system resources to make the scenario than run it, since the game only has so much it ever feels the need to load at any point in time & it's a pretty small fraction of the entirety of the scenario. The file size should be massive though. Several megs, maybe even 10s of megs if you really have nothing better to do with your life.

 

I really wanna see someone do that with the limits gone & hear how it went.

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Originally Posted By: Kynjaka
Does this include the outdoors limit that doesn't allow you to have over 100 areas? So now we can make an entire planet! Or two!
I certainly hope not. Do you know how much time and hard drive space you'd need to create such a scenario? The mind boggles. The current limit is more than large enough.

If you think you have what it takes to make a scenario using the current maximum of 100 outdoor sections, by all means try. But be warned: It's a lot harder than it looks. I should know, because I've tried.

Originally Posted By: Cryolemon
It would be interesting to say the least if someone tried to make a whole planet.
Um, No. The odds of completing such a project are approximately nil. The odds of it producing even a halfway decent scenario are zero.

Originally Posted By: JtD
I really wanna see someone do that with the limits gone & hear how it went.
Here's exactly how it would go:

Someone will think it would be really cool to make the largest BoE scenario imaginable. This person will then design a handful of the outdoor sections, and maybe a dozen or so towns at most. He or she will discover that making such a behemoth of a scenario is actually a lot of work, get bored with the project, and set it aside "for a little while." The project will sit untouched for anywhere for a month to a year before it's rediscovered, picked at for a few days, and forgotten again. Eventually, the scenario will be lost to history due to either a hard drive crash or being deleted and overwritten.
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First: size doesn't matter; quality does.

Some of the better scenarios aren't HUGE, but rather possessing quality stories connected by quality situations.

Second: Although creating an entire Planet and a scenario that would handle a project of that size would end up as 'The Mystic' stated, "Eventually, the scenario will be lost to history due to either a hard drive crash or being deleted and overwritten."

It would not be enjoyable to create nor would it be enjoyable to play. It would simply be a case of satisfying one's need for accomplishing or possessing something of such a size. Once you've gone through several "stories" in a "World" the rest become terribly, redundantly, boring. (Mark that, "Been there, done that - ho hum").

What Alcritas has done with Nordakar should prove the point. Any "World", or "Planet" is composed of a huge number of lives, situations, circumstances and individual "stories". IMNSHO, the way he tied individual stories together within several scenarios is without a doubt the ideal way to tell the story of the "World" itself. And he was only telling a short history of one location on one continent on one world.

I do, however, defer to the right for anyone who feels they have the ambition to attempt, much less accomplish, such a task, to "give it a go". I'm pretty sure, however, that there will only be a few who will give it a cursory look and then head elsewhere.

me

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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
I actually like the idea of making a planet... I'll think about ways to specify wrapping the world.

Of course, it would have to be a small planet. Like in The Little Prince.
Actually, a small planet isn't too bad of an idea. Maybe you could wrap it as a cube, or make a "ribbon" world like in Brett Bixler's "Destiny of the Spheres."

Large planets, to paraphrase what I said before, are simply not feasible. However, if no one's done so already, I have no objection if someone wanted to make templates for the Exile games in BoE, or any of the Empire continents.

And I read "The Little Prince" in French class (in French, of course); it's a good book.
Originally Posted By: Ahbleza
First: size doesn't matter; quality does.
Some of the better scenarios aren't HUGE, but rather possessing quality stories connected by quality situations.
Seconded. I'd rather play a dozen 1/10 scenarios with good stories, plots, and/or dialogue than one gigantic scenario with a massive number of generic towns and pointless side quests.
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Originally Posted By: The Mystic
Actually, a small planet isn't too bad of an idea. Maybe you could wrap it as a cube...
Ooh, or like a hypercube, in The Hut of Baba Yaga. My brain hurts trying to think about that, though.
Quote:
... or make a "ribbon" world like in Brett Bixler's "Destiny of the Spheres."
And now that makes me wonder about a Mobius strip world. Let's see, you'd basically just keep going one direction until you wrap around to where you started only now everything's been flipped left to right. You'd have to take some liberties with that to make it interesting though, probably, instead of making it a perfectly symmetric flip.
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Originally Posted By: icelizarrd
The Hut of Baba Yaga
You know, I downloaded that scenario a while back, but I have yet to play it.

Quote:
Quote:
... or make a "ribbon" world like in Brett Bixler's "Destiny of the Spheres."
And now that makes me wonder about a Mobius strip world. Let's see, you'd basically just keep going one direction until you wrap around to where you started only now everything's been flipped left to right. You'd have to take some liberties with that to make it interesting though, probably, instead of making it a perfectly symmetric flip.
A Möbius strip world would be relatively easy to set up the way you described. Make two "sides" that are left-right symmetrical (though not necessarily 100% perfect), and then connect them using two towns that act as tunnels.
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Originally Posted By: Cryolemon
Originally Posted By: Karoka
Would the ability to have your own custom sounds in a scenario be possible/worthwhile?


It's probably possible. Whether it's easy to code or worthwhile is a different question.
We've already got custom pics in the scenario.exr folder. I'd imagine that sounds could be easy enough to implement, although depending on whatever library is used they might need some work (do they need to be DLLed (or whatever goes on in Mac)?)

Also, it is possible to add custom sounds by ResHacking the boesounds DLL. However, to use it you'd have to drop in a new boesounds.
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Originally Posted By: Karoka
Would the ability to have your own custom sounds in a scenario be possible/worthwhile?
Planned.

Originally Posted By: He fined Angle is trying to kill
(do they need to be DLLed (or whatever goes on in Mac)?)
No, they'll just be stored as .wav files or whatever.

Originally Posted By: He fined Angle is trying to kill
Aaaaaaaaaaaa this code is scary
What, the BoE code?
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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
Originally Posted By: He fined Angle is trying to kill
(do they need to be DLLed (or whatever goes on in Mac)?)
No, they'll just be stored as .wav files or whatever.

Okay, but would it be possible to have it be able to decode mp3's or ogg's or something for longer sounds (like background music)?

On that note, a node to play a background sound (eg after starting it go on to other nodes or something) would be nice. Beyond adding mood music, one could add narration to the story if they noded it right.

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
Originally Posted By: He fined Angle is trying to kill
Aaaaaaaaaaaa this code is scary
What, the BoE code?
Yeah...I think it's just my relative inexperience with C++, as well as the fact that it's quite poorly commented and uses pointers and [censored]. Like, what is the freaking point of a pointer.
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Quote:
Okay, but would it be possible to have it be able to decode mp3's or ogg's or something for longer sounds (like background music)?

It's easy to handle a good variety of sounds by just hooking into the media library provided with the OS, assuming one is on Mac OS or Windows.

Quote:
Yeah...I think it's just my relative inexperience with C++, as well as the fact that it's quite poorly commented and uses pointers and [censored]. Like, what is the freaking point of a pointer.

You know, the vast majority of the BoE code (pretty much anything not written by Celtic Minstrel) is very plain vanilla (procedural) C. Pointers are an oddly tricky concept to grasp when one is first starting with them (I know I had trouble) but they're really pretty basic. You want crazy stuff? You should see what people can do with evil, complicated preprocessor macros or with template meta-programming. tongue
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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
Originally Posted By: Karoka
Would the ability to have your own custom sounds in a scenario be possible/worthwhile?
Planned.
How about custom sounds that can be played while your playing BoE? Then after it's done it can jump to a different sound or go into a loop. Oh yes, that's game music right there.
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Originally Posted By: Niemand
Quote:
Yeah...I think it's just my relative inexperience with C++, as well as the fact that it's quite poorly commented and uses pointers and [censored]. Like, what is the freaking point of a pointer.

You know, the vast majority of the BoE code (pretty much anything not written by Celtic Minstrel) is very plain vanilla (procedural) C. Pointers are an oddly tricky concept to grasp when one is first starting with them (I know I had trouble) but they're really pretty basic. You want crazy stuff? You should see what people can do with evil, complicated preprocessor macros or with template meta-programming. tongue
It just feels really foreign to me whenever I look at it...Like, I kinda get what something does but it seems like every other thing is some random number that looks like it means something...also the fact that there's, like, not very many files. IMO it would be really helpful to split some of this code into smaller files.

And whatever the hell template meta-programming is, keep it away from the code. I'd like to edit BoE one of these days, and it's got plenty enough meta, thanks very much.
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Some of the files are quite lengthy, but I'm still surprised you'd say that there's "not very many". The current version of the Windows code has some 55ish files, between the headers and regular source files. The Mac version has more than that, because it divides the classes up into separate files.

 

Are you looking at an older copy? Or do I just have lower standards than you about what makes something "not very many"?

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